Many scientists spend their lives trying to answer just one question. But geneticist Jack Szostak says there’s lots of problems to solve. He spent the first two decades of his career investigating chromosomes, specifically the role played by telomeres, tiny structures at the ends of chromosomes, and the enzyme telomerase, which revolutionized what we know about the aging process.
That research, from the 1980s, earned him a share of the 2009 Nobel prize for physiology or medicine. In the 1990s, Szostak turned his attention to RNA and its role in the early evolution of life.

On June 26th, 2015 the Supreme Court of the United States(SCOTUS) issued its long-awaited decision on same-sex marriage, ruling that the right to marry is a fundamental Constitutional right recognized under the 14th Amendment that cannot be denied to same-sex couples. As a result of the Court’s 5-4 decision, every state must now issue marriage licenses and recognize marriages between same-sex couples. The decision reflects a remarkably swift change of law and policy that began only in 2003, with the first such legal recognition handed down by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in its ground-breaking 2003 Goodrich decision. Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, 440 Mass. 309, 798 N. E. 2d 941 (2003).

There has been a partial settlement in the complex set of court cases
and a maternity decision in April 2015, involving a child born to actor
Sherri Shepherd and her estranged husband Lamar Sally through
gestational surrogacy. The child was conceived and born during the
parties’ marriage, using embryos created from Sally’s sperm and an
anonymous egg donor, and carried by a single mother as a gestational
carrier.

In July, and after years of refusing legal recognition to children born abroad from surrogacy, that country’s highest court has reversed course. The French Court of Cassation’s July 3rd ruling means that children born to surrogates abroad will now be legally recognized as children of their biological French parents, entitled to French birth certificates, and thus able to both confirm the parent-child relationship for all purposes and establish French citizenship. Surrogacy within France remains illegal and the decision does not apply to an intended parent who does not have a biological connection.

The National Children’s Study (NCS) was authorized by Congress in 2000 to study environmental influences on child health and development. However, in 2014 the Institute of Medicine (IOM) was asked to review the NCS and issued a report which outlined concerns regarding the study's design, management, oversight structure, and anticipated cost. As a result, the launch of the Main Study for the NCS was put on hold, and an advisory committee to the Director of NIH was tasked with reviewing the feasibility of continuing the NCS. In late 2014, the advisory committee recommended that, while the overall goals of the NCS should remain a priority for future scientific support, the NCS was not feasible as currently outlined. It was soon announced that the NIH would discontinue the NCS.

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) announced that
Manhattan Cryobank had pledged a gift of $100,000 to endow the Society
for Male Reproduction and Urology (SMRU) traveling scholar program. The
gift will permanently endow funds to bring a young urologist or male
reproductive specialist to the ASRM Annual Meeting each year.

The problematic SGR formula that has threatened payment reductions for doctors for many years is at long last set to be repealed. Late last night, the Senate voted to pass HR 2, the Medicare Access and Chip Reauthorization Act. The Senate bill is identical to the version that passed the House of Representatives in late March. The President is expected to sign the legislation into law. The Senate vote occurred just hours before an automatic 21% cut in Medicare fees was scheduled to take effect.

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) today announced it was endorsing the statement released from the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) calling for a moratorium on human clinical uses of Germ-Line Gene Editing until the safety and efficacy of the technique can be assessed.

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